Software Update Adds Autonomous Driving To Tesla's Bag of Tricks (nytimes.com) 242
An anonymous reader writes with the news that Tesla owners today found their cars had been upgraded with the company's new autopilot feature: "That means the next time you see a Model S cruising next to you on the interstate, look closely: It may be driving itself."
Adds the submitter: Well, I guess some of you will be celebrating this; but this submitters' fear, is that if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost, as is any skill that isn't practiced regularly. It is unlikely that 'self-driving cars' will reach a point where they can handle 100% of all driving circumstances without human intervention, emergency circumstances being the first and foremost example of what an automated system could not adequately handle unaided; what will we do then, when injuries that could have been avoided or when lives are lost because people aren't competent to operate a vehicle any longer?
$2,500 (Score:4, Informative)
It costs $2,500 to unlock this new software feature.
Re:$2,500 (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't heard anything about that, but what I have heard is that this is basically just adaptive cruise with lane assist on steroids. Likewise, the "omg we're losing our skillz" concern in the summary will have to wait until Google's vision comes true.
omg we're losing our skillz (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't speak for everyone but I have these type features in my car (adaptive cruise, lane assist, proximity warnings, blind spot detection, etc) and I can say without a doubt for me it surely hasn't made me a better driver. I get into my other car without all of that and find myself making noob driving mistakes (not checking blind spots, not keeping consistent speed, much longer parallel parking, etc). It's actually kind of unnerving at how fast I came to rely on the car to do these tasks for me.
I haven't seen any studies so maybe I'm just a goof but I consciously try not to rely on those things because I don't want to forget how to actually drive.
Re:omg we're losing our skillz (Score:5, Insightful)
I can say without a doubt for me it surely hasn't made me a better driver.
The point of the features isn't to make you a better driver, they're to decrease the chances of you becoming a corpse.
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"It's actually kind of unnerving at how fast I came to rely on the car to do these tasks for me."
That's more or less what I thought when reading "if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost" as it weren't already true: how many Americans have lost the ability to drive (or never got it) a manual transmision car? What do you think it happens when a 99% highway driver enters a two directions road?
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I can't speak for everyone but I have these type features in my car (adaptive cruise, lane assist, proximity warnings, blind spot detection, etc) and I can say without a doubt for me it surely hasn't made me a better driver. I get into my other car without all of that and find myself making noob driving mistakes (not checking blind spots, not keeping consistent speed, much longer parallel parking, etc). It's actually kind of unnerving at how fast I came to rely on the car to do these tasks for me.
I haven't seen any studies so maybe I'm just a goof but I consciously try not to rely on those things because I don't want to forget how to actually drive.
Maybe the cars with these advanced sensors need to condition their drivers to prevent this loss of awareness.
Every time your car catches you doing something wrong, it should not only alert you, but also electrically shock you!
Re:$2,500 (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, the "omg we're losing our skillz" concern in the summary will have to wait
It is already happening. There are some people that no longer know how to shoe a horse.
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I read the article, just I initially missed the part about the cost.
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Got a citation for that? The only mention of a fee I could find was from a Car and Driver blog post
http://blog.caranddriver.com/elon-take-the-wheel-we-test-teslas-new-autopilot-feature/
I would have thought there'd be some communication from Tesla if they were selling an OTA update?
Re:$2,500 (Score:5, Informative)
It costs $2,500 to unlock this new software feature.
That is not (entirely) accurate. The autopilot feature is currently on the price list as a $2500 option. I'm under the impression that all current cars _may_ have the right sensors (they are generally helpful in getting good collision avoidance ratings--I'm not sure but I assume if you have the hardware and you did _not_ pay for autopilot when it was available as an option, then you may be able to pay now to enable the feature).
However, my car, built in late September, 2014, was not priced under the current pricing model--there was no autopilot option at that time, yet my car (like most cars built in late September, 2014) has all the sensors and autopilot is fully enabled on my vehicle as of the software update I installed this morning. I did pay for other options that are no longer available (as I recall, parking sensors and fog lights), but I did not have to pay $2500 to enable autopilot. -se
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The autopilot was always in there. For when he decides 'it's time'...
It's actually much easier to program an autokilling autopilot than a safe one.
Re:$2,500 (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not only that, but:
That is a SINGLE sentence.
How about if the autonomous car just stopped i
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I predict that rural highway driving will be the first place that autos can operate autonomously. It may be only limited-access highways (freeways with no intersections, no lights, no at-grade crossings) but could probably work on traditional federal highways. Cities and rural undeveloped or underdeveloped roads will have to come later.
I'm not all that worried about atrop
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Also I see autonomous vehicles being staged in their deployment. Self-driving vehicles are a traffic and transport engineers wet dream, they will dramatically increase traffic flows on existing roads. So there will be a significant incentive to municipalities to get sections of their roads "AI" ready.
My prediction is that trunk roads will be the first ones to go autonomous with councils actively contributing to the mapping of the roads. Essentially you will get into your car, drive yourself through the ba
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So there will be a significant incentive to municipalities to get sections of their roads "AI" ready.
There will, however, be just as little money to do that as there is to maintain them currently. The cost of getting roads "AI ready" will fall, in any case, on the taxpayer, the vast majority of whom will not be able to afford to own an AV.
Initially you will be mixed in with human driven cars, but then over time priority lanes and pathing will be given to the self driving cars
And the money for creating new lanes just for the few who own AV will come from the general taxpayer, too.
once self driving cars hit critical mass the trunk roads will be self drive only.
It will never happen. There will be too many taxpayers who don't own the cars who have just as much right to use the main roads as anyone else. Forcing those peop
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Well where I live they are always building new roads and tunnels to keep traffic moving. So there is a budget there. And they also seem quite keen on making lanes transit lanes where you have to have a minimum of 2 or 3 people in the car to use them. They don't build extra lanes to do this. They re-purpose existing lanes. And mapping a road way in high resolution is significantly cheaper than digging a big ass tunnel.
And you are right, the funding will come from the general tax payer. The same tax pay
Let the numbers do the talking (Score:3)
I get that _you_ may feel safer if something else does things for you but lets be realistic about the numbers and risk. Fear mongering is not how you go about advocating change, but that is what you are attempting to do. The appeal to emotion is way too obvious.
To start, we are moving the numbers to more recent 2013, in which you had a .0088% chance of a fatal car crash.
By comparison, you had a .17% chance of dying do to heart disease, a .02% chance of dying from diabetes. You had a higher chance of deat
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You can live in a bubble if you wish.. Make sure you stop breathing any non purified air if you are that paranoid too. Eat a pure vegan diet and for pity sake the only exercise you should do is swim in a shallow chlorinated pool so you can't drown and sweat can't pool anywhere. Even then, if you are in a community you are at risk so live like a hermit and let your family line die out if that's what you want to do.
As long as you don't try to force that world view on others or make others pay for your para
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How about if the autonomous car just stopped itself as quickly as possible in the case of an incident that it cannot handle?
What could possibly go wrong?
Re:How big a percentage would be negatively affect (Score:5, Insightful)
Computers:
* See and process information from all directions at once
* React in a millisecond to changing conditions
* Never get bored, tired, or distracted
* Don't drive recklessly for thrills
The notion that humans will actually react better than an automated system in an emergency seems backwards to me. I expect a computer to react much more competently and predictably, if for no other reason than the computer can analyze and react a thousand times faster. It's humans that are *causing* most of the emergencies in the first place by needlessly driving into each other at high speeds.
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The notion that humans will actually react better than an automated system in an emergency seems backwards to me.
I was thinking that cars might struggle at first with strange scenarios, not ones where it needs to react swiftly. Something like if a police officer is directing your vehicle around an accident at a five way intersection, in a construction zone during a rainstorm at dawn, or some such thing.
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* Never get bored, tired, or distracted
I'd add to that list:
* Never drive preoccupied or in emotional imbalance
* Never drive intoxicated or on drugs
Let's face it, we don't leave the rest of our lives behind when we get behind the wheel. If things are troubling or exciting at home or at work or in your love life or with your friends or relatives the mind is churning on it. And while I don't know many who will blatantly drive drunk, I think quite a few have pushed it with hangovers and such. It certainly doesn't take much to drive better than huma
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* Never get bored, tired, or distracted
I'd add to that list: * Never drive preoccupied or in emotional imbalance * Never drive intoxicated or on drugs
When I have sex, there is a chance I could get a disease, or a stalker girlfriend, but regardless of risk, there are some pleasures in life I'll never outsource to a machine. Driving is similar and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this opinion.
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I think you'll be able to find cases where humans react better and cases where computers work better.
This is true, for now... but consider what happens over time: every time a computer does something sufficiently poorly (i.e. badly enough to cause an accident), there will be a full black-box recording and log of the conditions and operations that led up to the accident. The car company's programmers will go over the situation with a fine-toothed comb to understand what happened, and update the software to handle that situation better in the future.
Rinse and repeat for a decade or two, and the number of
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You forgot about the part where a sensor fails, the AV is the cause of a multiple fatality accident (e.g., plows head on to a school bus), the entire country hates on the automaker, and the families of the victims all sue the automaker.
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"Driving is fun. You have an algorithm for that?"
Oh, but they also took that into account: driving is less fun each day it passes.
Risk v. Reward (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure humans might lose some of their proficiency at controlling a vehicle but the self-driving car would make those skills less necessary.
Which would have fewer fatal accidents: automated vehicles with a human with poor skills or a standard car with normal everyday drivers?
I am betting the automated car wins. Sure the automated car may have some accidents that the human might avoid but I'm betting the total goes down.
Now I don't want an automated vehicle but that is because I really enjoy driving but the accident thing is IMO a red herring.
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Sure the automated car may have some accidents that the human might avoid but I'm betting the total goes down.
Just like letting your brother have sex with that girl you met in the bar reduces your risk of getting diseases.
Some risks are worth taking.
The skill of operating a vehicle will be lost? (Score:4, Insightful)
People barely have any skill at that *now*.
Lives lost (Score:2)
We already have incompetent people killing others in mundane situations due to carelessness and incompetence
It was a slippery slope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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My kingdom for mod points.
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Moderators, you have been whooshed. This is funny, not insightful.
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When Ford introduced the Model T it is going to degrade the riding ability of the average person. No longer will someone know how to saddle a horse and hitch it to a buggy.
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I told them when GM introduced its new fangled hydramatic transmission...
Considering that the hydramatic transmission was introduced in 1939 [wikipedia.org], and you supposedly remember the good old days before the hydramatic was on the market -- how old are you?
I would have expected a much lower user ID.
For that matter, if you were just talking to your grandpa "the other day", how old is he? He must be pushing 130 years old, at a minimum. You'd better call the Guinness World Records folks before it's too late.
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I think grandpa was talking about one of the early sex robots.
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That is only a problem in the US. Manual's are still preferred in most of the rest of the world.
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"That is only a problem in the US. Manual's are still preferred in most of the rest of the world."
Not for much longer. See the trend on luxury cars? the don't even give you the manual option anymore. It won't take longer for that to percolate down mass vehicles.
Re:It was a slippery slope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the "geewhizbang gadgets" you're referring to have demonstrably saved lives and reduced accidents. Please justify your claim that they do not "add any real value" to the vehicle.
Many of the remainder of the "geewhizbang gadgets" you're referring to have demonstrably reduced maintenance work required on the vehicle. Please justify your claim that they do not "add any real value" to the vehicle.
Seriously - the choice is not between a 1973 Buick that lasts for a million miles and a 2015 Honda that lasts for 150,000 miles and then falls apart due to planned obsolescence. The choice is between a shitty 1973 Buick Sklyark that lasts for 20,000 miles before it starts to slowly and inexorably fall apart, requiring constant major upkeep, and a 2015 Honda that requires you to bring it to the service station once every couple months for routine service, but lasts for 150k miles.
The good old days weren't as good, reliable, or safe as you seem to be saying, friend.
Re:It was a slippery slope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily I remember the good old days, and they were terrible.
Having to pull the choke every time you turn off the engine or risk not being able to start it again? No thanks.
All the fun-filled mornings spent with the family pushing your car until it started? No thanks.
Brakes on your car suddenly failing for no reason when you're going down the highway? (yes this actually happened to me) No thanks.
Bursting radiators, torn up drive belts, worn clutch discs? I think I'll pass on those as well.
And not to mention if you got in an accident even at relatively low speed you were literally dead meat. The word 'death can' used to have a very real and chilling meaning.
Modern cars are way safer and more reliable; it's so silly it's not even a comparison
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Modern cars are way safer and more reliable; it's so silly it's not even a comparison
Which explains perfectly is why there is zero market for old cars....
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"and a 2015 Honda that requires you to bring it to the service station once every couple months for routine service, but lasts for 150k miles."
Well, I choose my year 2000 Merc then, which already went over those 150k miles with only requiring me to bring it up to the service station once every year and a half. And given I saw the last time I went to the service station my exact model only with over 350k miles in the odometer, I think it still has some more years churning around in front of it.
"The good old
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The last upgrade that mattered was hard chrome plated piston rings. That's what changed ring life from 100k to 250k. Nothing more complicated. That was about 1990 for the rice burners, 5 years later for everybody else.
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If you have to repair a vehicle frequently, it is not reliable - unless you mean that you can rely on it to fail regularly.
Electronic fuel injection has replaced the mechanical carburetor. Neither are manual devices. The carburetor is a simpler device to repair, but much less reliable and also less efficient. We are long past the time when self maintenance is a worthy consideration for the majority of of the population.
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The only real world EFI work most people will do is swap out the O2 sensor.
Which is butt simple.
Read code. Get sensor(s). detach connectors, unscrew old ones, screw in new ones. attach connectors. Which is bad, 'stick in the part diagnostics', but in that case it almost always works. If the code is the back sensor, it's almost always the cat.
Owners of v8 volvos are screaming right now. Their cars have 16 o2 sensors and 8 cats. Some of which require two additional elbows be installed in your arms to r
Lose the skill of driving? (Score:2)
Honestly, I don't see many that HAVE it...
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Imagine there's a fire, and police is turning traffic the 'wrong' way down a one-way street, but away from the path of the blaze. What must your driverless car do?
Now imagine its your unaccompanied 7-year old nephew or niece in the driverless car.
The simple driverless technology we currently have (simple in comparison to our capabilities) can only augment humans, not supplant humans.
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In the worst case the driverless car has to pull to the side, stop and wait. In a better case, the police broadcast a signal which tells it to override normal rules and turn around.
Autopilot features wanted: (Score:2)
Tesla owners today found that their cars had been upgraded with the company's new autopilot feature
Can it be programmed to find a charging station and plug itself in all by itself when its battery get low, like a Roomba? And, while they're at it, can it be programmed to vacuum my carpets or mow my lawn?
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Why do you think Tesla developed the automatic charger? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Rural areas (Score:2)
I've always wondered how self driving cars would handle rural areas. In particular rural mountain areas with a foot of snow on the road. In a lot of rural areas there may be a distance of hundreds or thousands of meters between the GPS position of a house and the actual house. I can just envision walking a mile uphill in a foot snow while your car sits at the bottom of your driveway with a blinking, "NO ROAD" error. I just don't see how that problem can be overcome to the point where all vehicles could
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Initially they don't need to. They will still be human driven at that stage. But you will drive yourself down your pot holed drive way, along the never graded dirt track until you get to state route 7, which has been mapped by the council. Then the car will take over and you can spin your chair around and sit on your laptop.
Then 2 mins from where you need to exit off the mapped network, the car will alert you to get your shit together, back into your chair, looking forward and ready to take over. You wi
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The reason why these will become wanted is the amount of traffic that will be able to be carried on the main roads will be orders of magnitude higher if all the cars are autonomous.
Sure, I understand the benefits and I actually think self-driving cars would be amazing for rural drivers once they get onto main roads. Driving 50 miles to town on empty country roads is fun the first few times but quickly becomes the most tedious part of rural living. Automating that would be fantastic. My biggest worry about self driving cars is that while they may handle 99.9% of all situations for 99.9% of people, they will never get to 100%. So, if you happen to be part of that 0.1%, you will be m
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It's there as a potential. But cars don't hit 100% of people now. I would suggest the benefits far out weigh the negatives and it will be a gradual process anyway so I'm hoping they will be ready for close to everywhere use when I'm past retirement.
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In particular rural mountain areas with a foot of snow on the road.
They'll probably just start by not going to those areas. Then slowly the cars will learn over time as data is gathered.
I think submitter sounds like a Luddite... (Score:2, Troll)
"Software will never be able to beat human reactions!" Yet in many cases now, it already has.
Flying is in some respects much simpler than driving; and, auto-pilots can now take off, cruise, and land.
The real test? What the insurance rates are -- self-driving cars will likely be a lower risk, and thus cost less to insure. Perhaps not at the beginning, while the kinks are being worked out. (Around the dial.)
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Flying is in some respects much simpler than driving; and, auto-pilots can now take off, cruise, and land.
Airplanes have been able to do that safely since before a lot of people on this site were born.
With paying passengers no less:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The first aircraft to be certified to CAT III standards, on 28 December 1968, was the Sud Aviation Caravelle
Today you'll find autoland in both business jets and almost all airliners. It really isn't that hard.
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Today you'll find autoland in both business jets and almost all airliners. It really isn't that hard.
You will find it in a small fraction of the aircraft flying today, at a small fraction of the airports. It requires special certification for the aircraft and the pilot and the airport. It is not a commodity item that Joe Pilot can have Frank Mechanic install in his C182 and then pass control of the airplane over to Joe Junior the eight year old prodigy. Nobody has EVER suggested removing the pilot controls from the aircraft that have Cat III systems, nor does the FAA allow the pilots to snooze while the p
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You will find it in a small fraction of the aircraft flying today, at a small fraction of the airports. It requires special certification for the aircraft and the pilot and the airport. It is not a commodity item that Joe Pilot can have Frank Mechanic install in his C182 and then pass control of the airplane over to Joe Junior the eight year old prodigy.
All true, but not likely for the reasons you might think...
Everything in aviation is just stupid expensive, for several reasons... The first is that it is an amazingly small market, so there is no volume to absorb R&D costs... The second is that it is completely and totally regulated by the FAA which is a very conservative organization. Perhaps rightly so in many ways, but having witnessed it firsthand, I can say that it has no incentive to change.
Using such systems does not make getting the pilot license easier, either. A large part of the training for pilots of those aircraft is not "how to use the autopilot", it is "how to disable the autopilot when it fails".
Actually, most aircraft that are used for learning to
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Actually, most aircraft that are used for learning to fly, don't have autopilots.
If you think that an aircraft with a Cat III autoland is being piloted by someone who just learned how to fly, you are crazy. Initial pilot training is done in aircraft without autopilots, or without using the one that is there, because initial pilot training is when a pilot learns how to fly, not how to manage the most complex and failure prone systems in the aircraft. Most initial training is done in aircraft where the "U" in "GUMP" (undercarriage, i.e. "landing gear" for non-pilots here) has the respons
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I would like to think that if we were in the same room together, it would be possible to communicate more effectively...
It feels like we're talking past each other, rather than with each other...
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You started talking about business and commercial jet autopilots where tens or hundreds of lives are at stake and saying how perfect and safe such systems are, and now you want to change to unmanned vehicles where passenger safety is irrelevant and crashes are relatively meaningless.
The irony is that the autopilot in the Global Hawk is MUCH more advanced than the one in a 747, yet there is no one on board.
All that means is the autopilot in the 747 is old and basic.
Given a reason and enough money, that can be fixed, but there aren't enough 747s to justify the development cost and even then pe
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The irony is that the autopilot in the Global Hawk is MUCH more advanced than the one in a 747, yet there is no one on board.
"Advanced" doesn't necessarily mean "safer", and you've already admitted that there have been Global Hawk crashes. Even so, using the Global Hawk autopilot as an argument for how great automobile autopilots will be is just as wrong. Different systems, different cost, different operating environments, and even the easier case of a low-density operating environment isn't that perfect.
and even then people wouldn't get into a 747 without pilots because of "fear".
If you are a pilot who has any experience with aviation autopilots and you do not consider that fear to be justified, then I
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The real test? What the insurance rates are -- self-driving cars will likely be a lower risk, and thus cost less to insure.
All that means is that self drive cars will be associated with the poor, and rich people will still drive themselves to demonstrate their wealth. Pretty much like how rich people own yachts even though powerboats require less skill and maintenance.
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Such as when the center engine of a DC-10 goes "bang", cutting off the hydraulics and the only control is from adjusting the throttles of the remaining two good engines?
And for atrophied skills, consider Air France 330 (IIRC) from 2009, which was flown in a controlled stall into the Atlantic Ocean because the co-pilot forgot that recovery from a stall requires the nose to be pushed down. Original cause was autopilot decoupling when the pitot tube got iced up.
Main problem with computer control is trusting
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Can you give details of this Airbus demonstration flight crash? I think you've got a garbled version of Air France flight 296. The plane did refuse the pilot's command to raise the nose, but that was to prevent a stall. At the time this pilot/plane conflict occurred, the pilot had flown the plane into a state where a crash was inevitable.
Inspired by the United Airlines flight 232 (the DC-10 crash you cite), software has been written to control planes by differential thrust, and to do so better than people c
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Going suddenly from everything OK to here, you have a go can be very messy and has lead to some fairly spectacular crashes. The human element of the operation has not been involv
Automated Cars are like Vaccines (Score:2, Insightful)
People arguing that some people will get hurt because a human no longer knows how to control the vehicle in an emergency are like anti-vaxxers saying their one child *might* react negatively to the vaccine. Both groups are ignoring the 99.9% of cases where people will NO LONGER BE DYING from STUPID SHIT.
How much worse can it get? (Score:2)
"if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost" Based on my experience this has already happened (or more likely never existed in the first place ;-)
Skills argument is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
So what if driving skills are lost. How many people can genuinely start a fire without a match, lighter or some other ready to go ignition device? How about those people who can actually remember the composition of gunpowder, and if they can know a way to actually get those ingredients? Ok, now about how to skin an animal, how to hunt, how to build shelter?
If driving a car goes the way of riding horses then skills are lost to the general public and only retained by those with a particular interest in them. And you know what? Nothing of value was lost.
Kirk Remembers... (Score:2)
MCCOY: What is it, Spock?
SPOCK; An invention, Doctor. First potassium nitrate, and now if he can find some sulphur and a charcoal deposit or ordinary coal.
(Kirk is at the outcrop of sharp diamonds, and putting them into the bamboo too.)
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And just as in the lighter vs. bow drill case, self-driving cars perform better and more consistently than most drivers. In six years and 1.8 million miles of testing Google's autonomous cars have been in twelve minor accidents, all of which were caused by human drivers.
As for degraded skills, you can see this on the road with human driven cars every day; it comes from lazy habits creeping in; people stop using their turn signals; they cut through the wrong side of the road when they make a left turn; they
Fix bugs (Score:2)
Can't wait. (Score:2)
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As a motorbike rider, I fully support more morons being forced to be passengers in robot cars
So let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Adaptive cruse, proximity warning and even lane following on the freeway seem to be achievable today with a reasonable level of safety. But it's simply not going to be fully autonomous until we have as creative algorithms as living things employ. I mean its a sad state of affairs when i
overestimating ourselves, aren't we? (Score:2)
So much human-hyping in that.
Firstly, which skills, exactly, do you keep sharp through a monotonous, repetitive activity like highway driving? Especially in the US with its turtle-speed speed limits? With the Tesla and other car makers approach to autonomous driving, the car is not even trying to manage all possible situations, only the ones that are so fucking boring, humans actually fall asleep doing them.
Secondly, what makes you think humans are better in emergency situations? For starters, we have this
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What makes you think that an automated car would be worse that you or you grandma at driving in bad weather?
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It may not be worse but it will have programmed sense, so it will refuse to attempt it.
Re:Bad weather.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I think bad weather is one of the places where automated cars will make a very positive impact on safety. We already have a limited form of this technology with things like anti-lock brakes, traction control, stability control, etc. If you've spent your entire life driving cars with these safety features, they probably feel normal to you. But, as the article suggests, once you come to rely on these features, you lose your ability to handle the vehicle safely in the absence of them. Have you ever pumped your brakes to prevent skidding? Do you know how to steer out of oversteer? Can your brain detect these conditions and react to them before you are in a dangerous situation? For most people, the answer is "probably not".
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Actually, I think bad weather is one of the places where automated cars will make a very positive impact on safety. We already have a limited form of this technology with things like anti-lock brakes, traction control, stability control, etc. If you've spent your entire life driving cars with these safety features, they probably feel normal to you. But, as the article suggests, once you come to rely on these features, you lose your ability to handle the vehicle safely in the absence of them. Have you ever pumped your brakes to prevent skidding? Do you know how to steer out of oversteer? Can your brain detect these conditions and react to them before you are in a dangerous situation? For most people, the answer is "probably not".
Every winter I go out skidding alone in my car to hone those skills. I'm driving a FWD Ford Focus now so it understeers, but I do pull the hand brake to play a bit and practice.
Three years ago I drove on snow for the first time while visiting Tromso. The minute we got the rental car I took it out skidding and my friend in the passenger sear was terrified. However, on the last day of our trip I was rounding a roundabout when I lost traction at about 15-20 KPH and almost understeered into a lake. I managed t
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"And I'd certainly choose computer over human for bringing my car to a safe stop when it has to deal with aquaplaning."
No dose of software can overcome physic laws. ...but, on the other hand, it can infuse a dose of common sense so it has not to deal with aquaplaning by avoiding it instead.
Re:We do what we always do ... (Score:5, Insightful)
but but but but what if Scotty beams down 500 orphans with their arms linked in a circle around your car while you're going 200mph?! What will your car do then?!?!
I am getting tired of all of the "Which should an autonomous car hit" questions when the answer is "Neither because if the car is functioning correctly, the car sensors should have picked up the little old lady as soon as she stepped into the street, and the busload of school kids when it came around the corner a block away, and will have decided the path to take to avoid every single obstacle within a few milliseconds or come to an ABS-assisted stop." I think people have joked so much about the light pole just jumping out in front of you that they are actually beginning to believe that can actually happen. Sure, someone might throw themselves off an overpass immediately in front of you and they're gonna die, but a human would have hit them too.
There are serious objections to autonomous driving (sensor reliability being the top one) but people are fixated on whatever moral alignment the car will have (sign me up for Lawful Evil).
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I think people have joked so much about the light pole just jumping out in front of you that they are actually beginning to believe that can actually happen.
While light poles will not "jump out" in front of a car, that little old lady who steps out into the street can step in front of your car before it is physically able to stop, whether computer or human controlled. The claim that the car can just "come to an ABS-assisted stop" to avoid hitting her is naive at best.
Sure, someone might throw themselves off an overpass immediately in front of you and they're gonna die, but a human would have hit them too.
It doesn't take falling from an overpass for someone to be in your path with almost no notice at all, and it is disingenuous to pretend that such a fall is the only way someone could appear in th
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Yes, I've seen pedestrians who look for all the world like they're heading down the sidewalk for some unknown destination ahead of them, who suddenly turn and step into the crosswalk in just one step. ... And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I've seen them step into the crosswalk and then stop while they chat with their friends who are still on the curb. When will they start to cross again? You think you'll see them turn and then start to walk, but some of them actually just start walking backwards into traffic.
I consider this to be a self-correcting problem.
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It's dishonest to try painting the objections to claims of AV perfection
It's dishonest to demand perfection. All it needs to do is be better than humans, and in urban environments where granny is likely to step out in front of a car, the speed limit is likely to be 45 or lower, and at those speeds cars can stop faster than you can think [arachnoid.com].
Re:We do what we always do ... (Score:4, Interesting)
How well do they handle signals by flagmen, police officers and so on? As far as I know, no autonomous system to date has the ability to see and correctly interpret traffic control flags or hand signals. (for that matter, how would one program a car so as to recognize a cop or construction workers hand signals but treat bicyclists hand signals differently and ignore non significant gestures by pedestrians, other drivers etc?)
Right now, as far as I know, they will correctly avoid barrels or pylons, but only by treating them as static objects to be navigated around, stopping if it can't figure out a safe path between or around them. There is no special rule set that tells it "objects of these shapes and colour combinations indicate a construction zone or accident site, switch to rule set B (for slower speeds, more weight given to moving objects in the sensor periphery etc)" Back when I was on the road crew, close calls by confused or distracted drivers was a daily occurrence. Sure, the computer is never distracted (one hopes!, the computer equivalent I guess would be wrongly weighting one set of inputs over another) but it would be easier to confuse it, especially when there are multiple workers in safety vests pointing and signalling to each other within the same view arc as the flagman or cop.
A related issue would be properly navigating the thicket of pylons or traffic "barrels", correctly following the temporary lane(s) and not mistakenly taking an opening in the pylon line right into the work site. This particular problem could be at least partly dealt with by more standardization on work site markings, minimum and maximum distances between pylons tightened up. On the car end, the software would have to allow for correct navigation between said pylons when the usual road markings are absent, indeed, even the usual pavement is missing.
As it stands now, construction and accident sites I think are places where the autonomous vehicle just gives up and signals the driver to assume control. Thing is, one of the hoped for benefits of autonomous vehicles is the ability to have a non-driver, sick, sleeping or drunk driver to safely get from A to B. And I'm sure the transport industry is looking forward to when they can have only a single driver or perhaps even no driver at all, allowing the truck to go non-stop. None of that is going to work very well if the vehicles can't handle a construction site.
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https://media.ford.com/content... [ford.com]
Give me a call when one of these clever cars can back my boat down a crowded ramp.
Ok, in fairness, this isn't automatic, it is simply an assist feature, but give them a few years, and it'll be automatic.
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According to TFA, only NY has a law against hands free driving. I think pretty much everywhere else assumes that driving hands free is going to lead you into something else that's already illegal.
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but reading a book, napping or playing musical instrument (yup I did see this on I580 - she was playing a recorder) is probably ok?
No, it probably isn't. It might not have any specific legislation against it, but that's not going to stop you falling foul of one of the generic ones.
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Needlepoint.
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Do we count the Slashdot editors who are beaten to death by mobs of people for posting "self-driving car" advertisements every few hours?
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I'm in.