FBI Concerned About Criminals Using Driverless Cars 435
gurps_npc (621217) writes As per the Guardian, The FBI is concerned about dirverless cars. It discussed issues such as letting criminals shoot while the car drives (silly in my opinion, apparently they haven't heard of "partners" or considered requiring such cars have a police controlled "slow down" command), the use of such vehicles as guided bullets (safeties again should stop this), and loading it with explosives and using it as a guided missile. This last concern is the only one that I considered a real issue, but even that is not significantly more dangerous than loading up a regular van full of explosives with a timer, then setting the timer to explode before you leave the vehicle next to a school, etc.
Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Funny)
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It'd be even better if we could put them into 'Senior Citizen' mode, where they randomly speed up and slow down, and change lanes without signalling.
Also known as 'North Carolina' mode. I live in North Carolina and that is how otherwise normal people drive here. They also drive 75 mph through construction zones.
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always respected construction zones until I saw the abuse in Alberta. They put their signs up days before they do any work. They put them way too far before the real work. When they're working very close to the road they'll not put signs up at all. It's just a clusterfark. A construction zone sign pretty much means nothing because the construction workers have abused the system so much.
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It'd be even better if we could put them into 'Senior Citizen' mode, where they randomly speed up and slow down, and change lanes without signalling.
Also known as 'North Carolina' mode. I live in North Carolina and that is how otherwise normal people drive here. They also drive 75 mph through construction zones.
It'd be even better if we could put them into 'Senior Citizen' mode, where they randomly speed up and slow down, and change lanes without signalling.
Also known as 'North Carolina' mode. I live in North Carolina and that is how otherwise normal people drive here. They also drive 75 mph through construction zones.
If you don't like the way I drive, do yer fancy construction somewhere else! Besides, with those hardhats the workers bounce harmlessly off my windshield.
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I also live in NC. I don't observe any random speeding up, only the random slowing and stopping. You've incorrectly assumed those people are otherwise normal just because there are so many of them. Self-driving cars will be wonderful. People will be able to do the same things they already do—eat, drink, apply eyeliner, read, text, etc.—but won't be bothered by occasional collisions.
Construction zones... instead of starting 1,000 projects and completing them in a month, NCDOT starts 100,000 and s
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I think it would be funny to steal cars and program to circle the Beltway endlessly until they run out of gas. We could see how many we could get going at once. It'd be even better if we could put them into 'Senior Citizen' mode, where they randomly speed up and slow down, and change lanes without signalling.
Randomly speeding up or slowing down, and changing lanes without signalling is called "Massachusetts Mode".
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure it's "normal driving mode".
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No Mass mode is where you try to drive fastest in the rightmost lane, and turn left before oncoming traffic when the light turns, or roll out into oncoming traffic in order to block the travel lane closest to you so you can make a left (both seperately refered to as the "Boston left" in depending on who you are talking to)
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Informative)
Funny joke but most senior citizens are better than average drivers with increasingly lower accident rates until they are over 75.
Here's the fatal accident rate per 100,000 drivers. Notice that after 75, senior drivers revert to being as dangerous as 34-44 year olds but are still not as dangerous as 25-34 year olds and younger.
16 years old 76
17 years old 73
18 years old 78
19 years old 68
19 years old and under 78
20 years old 64
21 years old 66
22 years old 63
23 years old 52
24 years old 44
20 to 24 years old 57
25 to 34 years old 34
35 to 44 years old 29
45 to 54 years old 23
55 to 64 years old 21
65 to 74 years old 19
75 years old and over 29
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:4, Funny)
Old people don't actually GET into accidents ... they just CAUSE others around them to get into accidents.
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At the still spritely age of 53, my experience is that accidents are caused mostly by tailgating, reckless driving (including driving like it's not raining or snowing), aggressive driving, and poorly maintained vehicles.
Tailgating is a huge cause of accidents. I've seen people tailgating at 10 mph over the speed limit in the SLOW lane. And they were not on autopilot either.
But here... how about a list from the industry..
Top 10 Causes of Accidents.
1. Speeding While Driving and Reckless Driving: Failing to
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At the still spritely age of 53, my experience is that accidents are caused mostly by tailgating, reckless driving (including driving like it's not raining or snowing), aggressive driving, and poorly maintained vehicles.
Tailgating is a huge cause of accidents. I've seen people tailgating at 10 mph over the speed limit in the SLOW lane.
When being tailgated, I slow down a little, in hopes that the person will pass me. If they still do that, I just keep on slowing down until they are at a safe distance.
Thing two. I have discovered this weird thing - it's called driving at the speed limit. I used to drive at least 10 percent over the speed limit, or whatever the traffic seemed to support. white knuckled crazy assholes on the road all around asshole me at 80 in a 65- bumper to bumper - you know the drill.
Then I tried driving the speed
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Insightful)
You are using the wrong numbers. you can't do a direct comparison of age to accidents, you need to include distance travelled. I would be willing to bet that after 75 the distance driven is only a fraction of the average for 34-44 year olds yet they have as many accidents. but since you didn't include that data what you have is pretty meaningless.
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How much did you want to bet?
From my post below:
The results are surprisingly similar for the rate per million miles driven as well.
It's not until age 79 and 80 that senior involvement in accidents and fatal accidents increases to that of 18 year olds.
70-74 year olds have essentially the same total accident rate, fatal accident rate, and injurious accident rate as 25-29 year olds at about 6t/2i/1f accidents per million miles driven.
Their record is better than 16-24 year olds.
---
Look, if you want to say older
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70-74 year olds are slightly less risky than 25-29 year olds and slightly more risky that 30-65 year olds.
75-79 year olds are similar in risk to 20-24 year olds but with less fatal accidents.
80+ are less risky than 16-19 year olds and slightly more risky than 20-24 year olds (12 accidents per million miles vs 10 accidents per million miles, ~4.5 injurious accidents vs ~4.0 accidents, and about the same (~2.5 vs ~2.8) fatal accidents.
This is true both per 100,000 licensed driver and per 1,000,000 miles driv
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The fatal accident rate per 100,000 drivers does not equate with being a "better driver".
Indeed. These numbers would be much more meaningful if it was per mile rather than per driver. Are older people safer drivers, or do they just drive less? Most people 65 to 74 are no longer commuting to work everyday.
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The results are surprisingly similar for the rate per million miles driven as well.
It's not until age 79 and 80 that senior involvement in accidents and fatal accidents increases to that of 18 year olds.
70-74 year olds have essentially the same total accident rate, fatal accident rate, and injurious accident rate as 25-29 year olds per million miles driven.
The parent poster's statement just struck me as blatant age discrimination. It's apparent from the data (both per licensed driver and per mile driven) t
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I know this is meant as a joke but this is exactly the type of shit that is going to happen. It will be the equivalent of Anonymous Coward for cars.
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It'd be even better if we could put them into 'Senior Citizen' mode, where they randomly speed up and slow down, and change lanes without signalling.
Or, more accurately, stay in the same lane with the blinker on for miles and miles...
Drug Smuggling is obvious application (Score:3)
Autonomous vehicles, especially ones that can go off-road? Fill the trunk with cocaine, set the GPS for a garage somewhere northeast of Mexicali, and unload it when it arrives.
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> Even suicide bombers are being rendered useless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Automation is killing jobs faster than we've ever imagined. Even suicide bombers are being rendered useless.
No problem. They can all get jobs with the FBI, and work in the Scare Mongering Department. They are really busy.
Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever (Score:5, Funny)
Even suicide bombers are being rendered useless.
It's a matter of cost-cutting. Those virgins every holy warrior gets in the end cost a lot of money and aren't really contributing much to the cause themselves. The holy warriors themselves could unionize, but their union membership is rather short lived by nature. Aside from the membership problems, what exactly would they do? Threaten to blow themselves up? I'd explain into detail on the soon to be introduced JihadBot 3000, but the projects development costs have gone through the roof, and the prototypes have all blown up for some reason.
Pardon my stereotyping...
TSA (Score:2)
But seriously, if these are concerns for driverless cars, they are concerns for regular cars too. It's not improbable to build a working remote-controlled car from any normal model anyways. It's regularly done for stun work, Mythbusters, etc.
Less. (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is that an autonomous car would probably be programmed to follow ALL the traffic laws.
What good is a get-away car that stops at every red/yellow light and yields to pedestrians?
That's not even going into whether the car would pull to the side of the road and stop when it detected emergency vehicle lights/sirens.
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I'd imagine that a good chance of getting away in a getting away car is behaving yourself in traffic, not drawing attention to yourself.
Re:Less. (Score:5, Interesting)
You are clearly imagination challenged. You don't use it to get away. You use it to stash all your stolen stuff in, send it 300 miles away, while you take some other route. Let the cops chase you. You've got no incriminating evidence.
you use 10 of them to send explosives to places you aren't going to be. while they're busy responding, you steal whatever.
You fill it full of drugs and send it off somewhere. It's the best drug mule ever, BECAUSE it follows all the laws. Why would it ever get pulled over? The FBI is right. The illegal uses are many and varied.
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You are clearly imagination challenged. You don't use it to get away. You use it to stash all your stolen stuff in, send it 300 miles away, while you take some other route. Let the cops chase you. You've got no incriminating evidence.
you use 10 of them to send explosives to places you aren't going to be. while they're busy responding, you steal whatever.
You fill it full of drugs and send it off somewhere. It's the best drug mule ever, BECAUSE it follows all the laws. Why would it ever get pulled over? The FBI is right. The illegal uses are many and varied.
This is one of the first posts that makes sense!
Most of the others on either side of the issue have really really weak arguments and examples. The above drug mule example is excellent!
I don't think there's any need to outlaw all cars with similar tech, but I also don't see any justifiable need for completely driverless cars. Ex. we could allow cars to drive themselves on the highway, but require a human to get the car to the highway. Similar to existing cruise control, it can only kick on once the vehicle i
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Ex. we could allow cars to drive themselves on the highway, but require a human to get the car to the highway.
With some exceptions.
Where a city sits at the hub of a suburban train system, parking problems and congestion resurface in the communities closest to the feeder stations. A system of circulating, self-navigating vehicles, shuttling between home and train station, would reduce the monetary and psychic costs of commuting and the land asphalted for train-station parking.
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Good point. I get in my automated car to take me to the airport. Then my automated car goes home, where it has a nice parking spot with inductive charging that doesn't cost me $20 a day. When I get back from my trip, I signal my car to come get me and it drives back to the airport by itself.
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What part of this can't be done just as well by a human, today? The "follows all the laws" part?
Pretty sure that handovers of stolen goods/drugs/whatever to different vehicles with different drivers already occur.
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And stays in the lane at the speed limit. Talk about an easy cat to PITT manuever, spike, shoot, etc. Is this some sort of backwards psychology by the FBI to get people to be more in favor of these cars?
Logs? (Score:2)
don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:2)
If the car would not drive without a passenger, that would solve those concerns. That would mean the car needs to be able to detect the presence of it's passenger, but it already has to detect pedestrians, other vehicles, stop lights, signs ...
If somebody had a need for a fleet of unmanned cars (pizza delivery?), they could get a driverless license just as we already have a driver license. Show an actual reason to be sending cars driving around without people and you're good.
Re:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's silly. After my robocar takes me to work, I should be able to send it back home to pick up my wife so she can run errands.
Re:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeppers.
For me, the biggest attraction of a driverless car is that I could go to work, then send it home. Or send it to pick the kids up from school.
Re:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus, it really eliminates the need to own so many cars. The car can do multiple duty, and borrowing a car is much more practical when it can pick you up at your door (whether it is shared between neighbors or is actually a taxi).
Parking becomes much easier to optimize when cars can drop and pick people up anywhere, and park themselves. There is no need for parking locations to be within a short walk of every destination.
You can also split up cargo vs personnel transport. Passenger vehicles could be smaller and optimized for passengers, with cargo vehicles being big boxes on wheels. You could take a bus to the grocery store and send your 12 bags home in a cargo vehicle while you take a bus back, or a 1-person car, etc. People don't need to own a vehicle large enough to make that trip they make once a month - they can rent for that.
Endless possibilities for transportation when you don't need people in the loop.
Re:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about stop trying to place restrictions on things just because they could be abused. We're supposed to be 'the land of the free,' for fuck's sake. This is just embarrassing.
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How about stop trying to place restrictions on things just because they could be abused. We're supposed to be 'the land of the free,' for fuck's sake. This is just embarrassing.
Some of us have been saying this type of thing for a large portion of our lives.
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Re:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:5, Funny)
Not needing a passenger happens to be one of the more awesome features of driverless cars... People can effectively have valet drop off for wherever they go. Cars can be shared because you're staying put at a given location for a period of a time. Cars can drive themselves to maintenance. Cars can make delivery runs. Sure, it's another attack vector, but so is putting salt in your eyes. The danger is imminent, don't put salt in your eyes. I think the more eminent threat is that automated cars are going to result in lots of sex happening on the road. I mean really, what do you think happens when you put people in a close quarters private 15 minute outing, with a virtual guarantee of no interruptions and no need for any person to be paying attention to what's going on outside of the car?
Re:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the more eminent threat is that automated cars are going to result in lots of sex happening on the road.
Sex is a lot more comfortable on a soft, roomy bed. And I don't want my car to smell like bodily fluids. I'm going to spend the time reading.
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Brilliant idea. I guess driverless cars that drop people off at the front of the building then park themselves are out of the question. Driverless taxis are out of the question.
Driverless cars that can drive themselves to the maintenance shop are out of the question.
Actually it's not a brilliant idea. It's plain stupid.
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Show an actual reason to be sending cars driving around without people and you're good.
I want to send my car in for its scheduled maintenance without me. I want my car to come get me if I'm out someplace and want to part company with whoever I'm with. I want to send my car to pick something up, and the seller will load it into the car for me. There's a good many reasons why I might want to send my self-driving car on a drive.
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I want you to just shut up and take the damn bus. I'm far from alone in that.
That's not at all feasible given where I live. The weather is abysmal and the nearest bus stop is around an hour and a half walk away. I've taken buses plenty before, at best they subject you to significant delays compared to being able to drive your own vehicle, unless you live someplace with massive traffic like I don't.
Give me PRT and I'll not be whinging, but buses are bullshit unless you live in a city. And even then, they are usually bullshit in this country. When I lived in SF I could drive to work i
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I would think part of the problem would be that, whatever checks you put in place, there's the potential to have someone alter the programming. Or someone could find a way to fool whatever detects whether there's a person in the car.
Not that I think this is a good reason not to have driver-less cars. It's kind of dumb to try to uninvent technology just because it might possibly be abused. It doesn't work. However, I endorse the FBI trying to figure out how they can protect against this kind of thing.
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Also, piling on... there is a lot of benefits to robotic delivery.
Imagine long range trucking where the vehicle didn't need a driver and wasn't subject to driving limits. It would make trucking a lot more competitive against trains.
Obviously... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is obviously a ploy to mandate government tracking on driverless cars, which they'll eventually extend to all cars.
They want to track all the data, on every citizen, all the time, in flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment.
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That's why I'm never giving up my 1970 Mustang.... No tracking and I can still repair it in my garage.
Regulation won't stop them... (Score:2)
As to the specific points raised:
It discussed issues such as letting criminals shoot while the car drives (silly in my opinion, apparently they haven't heard of "partners" or considered requiring such cars have a police controlled "slow down" command),
Slow down command won't mean a thing when the criminals rip out the necessary parts to make it moot or reprogram it to do something - ignore the command, do the opposite, or even blow up the vehicle.
the use of such vehicles as guided bullets (safeties again should stop this), and loading it with explosives and using it as a guided missile. This last concern is the only one that I considered a real issue, but even that is not significantly more dangerous than loading up a regular van full of explosives with a timer, then setting the timer to explode before you leave the vehicle next to a school, etc.
True, aside from it being a "guided" missile - just set a target in the GPS and off it goes....again, the potential is there and criminals won't allow i
Obivious FBI is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obivious FBI is obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Guess you've never heard of J. Edgar Hoover, then.
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so you are extremely naive and don't read daily mainstream news in your mom's basement. how cute
Only because they're stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention it will probably have a police override allowing them to remotely either stop it, or redirect it to a place of their choosing. I wouldn't be surprised if it would even tell the police it's intended route and destination if they asked it.
It will also probably have an emergency responder reaction where if there are sirens from police, fire, or ambulance it pulls over to the side and stops, as that is the law for humans. And as the poster mentioned, a partner could always drive a car so the one riding shotgun could still shoot.
Using it for bombings. What's so different from sending an autodrive vehicle to someplace with a bomb in it as opposed to sending a regular vehicle with a bomb and then leaving it before it blows, or even having some ignorant stooge drive it for you? After all, it's not like you can make the autodrive violate it's programming and plow through a crowd or into a mall. If you really wanted to do that, you could just rig a normal car up with remote controls. It's not that hard or expensive, they do it a lot on mythbusters, so it's not a strange concept to most people either.
Of course, the FBI has way too many people that need to deal with technology that really don't understand it in the slightest. Years ago I had to disappoint an FBI agent that I was helping by explaining to him how things really worked. He was getting samples from all the different printers so that they could make a database to identify what printer printed something like they used to do with typewriters. I had to explain to him that the fonts are totally programmable and have no unique characteristics to that printer. Also, that the inks and toners are actually made by only a handful of companies, and are again, not unique to the printer. He was very disappointing with the information.
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There should not be a kill switch in automated cars for law enforcement. That should not be the solution
I disagree, especially in the case of diverless cars that can move about without a driver. As much as we (legitimately) criticize the growing abusive and invasive nature of law enforcement, they do have a legitimate job to do in providing for the public safety. To that end they will need the ability to safely stop a diverless car. There will be legitimate situations where driverless vehicles need to be stopped by police. A protocol needs to be in place that allows the police to signal the vehicle to "pull
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There should not be a *signal* to do it. Backdoors are too easy, which will also make them easier to abuse. The bar should be high.
There are already microwave transmitters that can fry a car's control system at range (such as the one promoted by SAVELEC). This should be the preferred method. The police should be *so sure* that the driver is a criminal that they're willing to stake a lawsuit on physically destroying a car's control system. That should be the bar.
Let's stop giving the police ways to cut red t
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I disagree, especially in the case of diverless cars that can move about without a driver. As much as we (legitimately) criticize the growing abusive and invasive nature of law enforcement, they do have a legitimate job to do in providing for the public safety.
Screw off. Unless the constitution explicitly grants the government the power to do so, then it doesn't have that power. Furthermore, we're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Such a country would not sacrifice fundamental liberties for safety. I'd rather risk death than allow the TSA, the NSA surveillance, free speech zones, DUI checkpoints, constitution-free zones, the war on drugs, etc. All of which is similarly enabled by cowards who think that safety is more important than
Driverless cars? (Score:2)
You mean ground drones?
Well, uh, yes actually (Score:5, Interesting)
The future has a bunch of scary possibilities.
At some point, someone's going to figure out that if they tape a gun to a quadcopter, it becomes a very effective way to kill people - especially if you can afford 50 of them and can do some basic automation (ie. float to these GPS coords, then shoot anything that moves). Defense against this kind of threat is problematic.
And yeah, a driverless car would be a good base to build some effective weapons on. You're going to get "drive here" for free. "Keep driving a bit, then blow up" is pretty easy to add on to that. And it requires very little personal commitment to be effective, assuming you're competent in dealing with the software.
Re:Well, uh, yes actually (Score:4, Insightful)
The future has a bunch of scary possibilities.
At some point, someone's going to figure out that if they tape a gun to a quadcopter, it becomes a very effective way to kill people - especially if you can afford 50 of them and can do some basic automation (ie. float to these GPS coords, then shoot anything that moves). Defense against this kind of threat is problematic.
And yeah, a driverless car would be a good base to build some effective weapons on. You're going to get "drive here" for free. "Keep driving a bit, then blow up" is pretty easy to add on to that. And it requires very little personal commitment to be effective, assuming you're competent in dealing with the software.
The future is full of scary possibilities and it always has been. I am kind of curious about just what changed us from a people that welcomed them to a bunch of gutless wonders too scared to get out of bed.
Re:Well, uh, yes actually (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as the industrial revolution made most manual labor jobs safe, we began to value life more. In a time when you lost 3 kids to childhood disease, 2 to farming or machinery accidents, and ended up with 2 or 3 making it to adulthood, you made babies knowing you were going to see a 50%-70% loss rate. Nowadays, you make 2 and you expect them to make it to adulthood unless some major calamity happens.
Once you expect zero mortality, you begin to covet it. Also, with all the extra free time, people think of all the worst case, outlier scenarios. Most people, I've decided, are inherently evil and untrustworthy. They imagine themselves with all the power of technology, and then figure that's what The Man (TM) intends to do from the start. And then they fear something for it's danger.
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Television.
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slowpoke news:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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And yeah, a driverless car would be a good base to build some effective weapons on.
In fact, I'd bet that someone in the military is already working on the driverless tank.
FBI crime prediction (Score:2)
Wow, the FBI is so awesome, they can predict exactly what a criminal is gonna do in advance. How about they actually solve a murder, rape, or kidnapping once in a while? 35% of murders don't get solved .. maybe when they get that number down to like 5% I'll start believing the feds when they say it's gonna rain tomorrow. Meanwhile anything to reduce the 30,000 highway deaths per year will be appreciated. If automated cars are illegal, only the federales will have automated cars with a dummy driver.
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How about they actually solve a murder, rape, or kidnapping once in a while? 35% of murders don't get solved
The second sentence contradicts the first. They do solve murders quite often; 65% of the time in fact.
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In the FBI's defense, it should be noted that they don't investigate murders or rapes, unless they happen on Federal property. Local police handle murders and rapes.
Kidnapping are an FBI thing. Though only since the Lindbergh kidnapping. That was so high profile that J. Edgar th
What will cops do for their Quota? (Score:5, Interesting)
IF everyone is in an automatic car that obeys all traffic laws all the time, will there be no more traffic tickets?
If an auto ca can drop someone off at the airport then drive back home, what will happen to all the long term parking garages?
If an auto car will find it's own parking space, is that the end of valets?
I for one am happy to see all that crap come to an end.
You mean, like this (Score:2)
http://www.networkworld.com/ar... [networkworld.com]
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Hack the car (Score:2)
All these comments about "well what if the police have a slow down command" or "what if there are safeties" fails to address the FIRST rule of computer security.
Physical security is the first rule.
if you don't have it then your system is not secure.
Physical security is having actual physical possession of the machine. Well, the criminal might have that. Which means all your safeguards and overrides might be shut off or hacked or bypassed.
If I'm a criminal, I can remote control the car and use it as a surfac
Why is it silly? (Score:2)
(silly in my opinion, apparently they haven't heard of "partners" or considered requiring such cars have a police controlled "slow down" command)
Why is that silly? Do we really think crooks will not find some way of overriding the "slow down" command? As for "partners", a computer does not get stressed or feel under pressure when chased by cops and thus will be less likely to make mistakes.
Why is worrying about this silly?
dirverless cars? (Score:2)
I'd be pretty cnocerned about them too.
Nothing to see here. Seriously. (Score:2)
Typical /. headline that (Score:2)
Clearly, there is only one solution (Score:2)
The Government Control Over All Autonomous Cars Act. It's a working title, we're trying to come up with a backronym for SAFECAR.
An even bigger problem... (Score:2)
Adults locked in Hot Driverless Cars.
easy (Score:2)
Easy problem to solve.
My car's airbag has an interlock that causes it to shut off when my 6yr old son is in the passangers seat. A similar interlock can be put on the drivers seat. If there's not a living breathing human in the car, it can't "go"
No longer an issue.
Next inane concern the government will try and use to put tracking devices in my car please?
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Except it removes a lot of things we want to do with driverless car, and can be hacked* with a bag of potatoes
*Using it ironically.
YOu're missing the big one (Score:2)
Putting an automated weapon system in one. Now you can drive by shoot and be miles away.
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Well, y'know, if the cops can't slow a car down by pushing a button, there are always spike strips...
Re: Here it comes (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't even need a button. I highly doubt an automated car will proceed to pilot itself on a high speed chase, or ignore red and blue lights.
Fbi should go back to consulting their Internet slang dictionary, rather than trying to think.
Re: Here it comes (Score:5, Informative)
They won't even need a button. I highly doubt an automated car will proceed to pilot itself on a high speed chase, or ignore red and blue lights.
Fbi should go back to consulting their Internet slang dictionary, rather than trying to think.
Don't put a kill switch in my car. Kill switches will be hacked and abused. Devices will be sold and marketed to kill a car, even if they are illegal. Just like the MIRT [themirt.com] and all the related devices. Illegal as a $7 bill but assholes still buy them.
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Knives and other cutting implements can be abused by criminals, don't include them in my kitchen!
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Knives and other cutting implements can be abused by criminals, don't include them in my kitchen!
That example isn't even close to being equivalent. We're talking about the possibility that which someone can, with relative ease, wirelessly and anonymously deprive me of the use of my property without leaving much of a trace. You seem to be describing the crime of physical breaking and entering, which I would argue is none of those things.
Re:In Iraq? (Score:5, Funny)
Car heaven is where the mechanics are German, the drivers are Italian, and the leather is maintained by a British butler.
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Car heaven is where the mechanics are German, the drivers are Italian, and the leather is maintained by a British butler.
In heaven, the lovers are Italian, the cooks are French, the Germans make the cars, the Swiss are the Bankers, and the British are the police.
In hell, the Swiss are the lovers, the Italians make the cars, the French are the bankers, the British are the cooks, and the Germans are the police.
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Yes, because of past car bombings, it's much harder to park a van in front of somewhere sensitive for even a few minutes. There is definitely a "demand", so to speak, for a remote-control van that wouldn't have to park.
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I think drug dealers would love driverless cars. No one to arrest. You could say the "owner", but much harder to prove.
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Those do sound like problems, but human drivers terrify me for rather similar (and some different) reasons.
I doubt it. (Score:3)
Okay, so you claim to be an engineer AND a computer scientist. That means a LOT of math classes for you.
Yes it can. That's basic math. Stopping distance is determined by 3 things:
1. reaction time (computers are quicker than humans)
2. speed
3. surface conditions
So the autonomous car should stop in a shorter distance than a human would.
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Bad guys can program computers to do bad things without any human involvement (beyond the initial orders from the bad guys). Should we give the police kill switches for computers so they can turn off any computer they suspect may be involved in a crime?
Bad guys can also park cars near sensitive locations, pack the trucks with explosives, and detonate them remotely. Should we make all cars with special locks that the police have master keys to? This way the police can open any car at any time if they deci