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Personally, i can't wait until all cars are driven by computers...
1:04 for the cyclist bit
Wow. I too can't wait. It would have to be ALL cars though wouldn't it? Otherwise you'd still have to see the moron's behaviour while you're driving/being driven around.
That's how all drivers should behave!
As much as I hate the concept of the driver-less car it might make driving safer...
...assuming the cars don't become self-aware and start terminating everyone 😈
Wow. I too can't wait. It would have to be ALL cars though wouldn't it?
The potential deal breaker for it all is the ability to simply take the piss. Imagine if you knew there was a self driving car there, the potential to simply weave around a bit, stop, step out into the road and watch the car slam the brakes on...
There was an interesting newspaper article a while ago about the potential new technology and laws needed for self-driving cars.
There was a story in the news today of someone hacking a baby monitor and screaming obscenities at both child and mother. For this reason, and others, I'm not keen on the idea of Borgmobiles.
Not sure if google are a benevolent overseer, for the betterment of mankind, or skynet...
Not sure if google are a benevolent overseer, for the betterment of mankind, or skynet... 😀
It's is easy to be sceptical. Ultimately I think Google is all for the betterment of Google.
So Skynet then. Google are far to powerful.
Google gets hacked a lot, openly favours whoever gives them money and suffers from security flaws such as HeartBleed, Skynet build single-use-only time machines which then get used again as demanded by the plot and suck at killing annoying brats. Is it wrong of me to want more from our future dark overlords? Say what you like about Ming the Merciless but at least he didn't 'accidentally' harvest information from personal wi-fi whilst photographing peoples' houses for burglar-view.
Wow. Did Google wee in your shoes?
Google gets hacked a lot
What are you talking about here? The company, one of it's services? Give me an example, because that's blatant pish as far as I can recall.
suffers from security flaws such as HeartBleed
Well,
a) Heartbleed affected like half of the Internet, as it was a bug in open source software in common use by (amongst other things) Linux-based web servers. To damn a company for being vulnerable to heartbleed is akin to saying, "well, they use computers." Anyone not affected would have been down to blind luck rather than good practices. And,
b) Google were one of the minority of high-profile Internet-based companies who [i]weren't[/i] affected.
Apologies for not responding to the rest of your post, I stopped reading when you started papping on about Skynet.
but at least he didn't 'accidentally' harvest information from personal wi-fi
To be honest I never understood what the fuss was about, as anyone passing your house can harvest the same information 24/7.
Google found heartbleed.
Did they type 'Heartbleed' into Google? 🙂Google found heartbleed.
Back to the OP this would be pretty simple to implement on motorways where 90%+ of the issues are removed. Would make long journeys much better.
🙁
Sorry I mostly jumping on google = does evil bandwagon am bad person repeating weak internets meme from old fashionedness. #hangheadinshame
My point isn't that Google is any worse than any other big tech company, just that it isn't safe from security threats, which could cause issues if evil terroristic hackers decide to help drive peoples' cars. There's only so much excitement I can take. I apologise for any outspokenness and am much calmer now having had a meditative ride through mud on wrong tyres. Praise google, praise google, and praise skynet as well just in case.
Wow. Did Google wee in your shoes?
Worse. They told me I could've bought my shoes cheaper elsewhere.
Amazing software!
But it saddens me that it displays more empathy to other road users than many drivers do.
In the last situation I imagine the drivers behind would be going berserk and pounding on their horns, despite the fact that the car is doing the right thing.
The potential deal breaker for it all is the ability to simply take the piss. Imagine if you knew there was a self driving car there, the potential to simply weave around a bit, stop, step out into the road and watch the car slam the brakes on...
my guess is that won't be the problem, it will be the 3 very polite drivers at a three way round about. No after you, No after you, No After you...........
But if the cars can communicate to each other then they can come to a decision about which one should break the deadlock and go. And they'll be able to do it faster and more safely than meatsack drivers relying on head nods and finger waves.
In fact inter-car communication is where you could see real advantages. The cars could potentially know about things that the [s]driver[/s]passenger is completely unaware of
e.g. a car wants to join from a slip road, so your car moves over a lane before you've even seen them. Or cars one mile ahead on your route suddenly perform emergency stops, so your car slows down in anticipation and possibly takes a different route to avoid the hazard completely.
my guess is that won't be the problem, it will be the 3 very polite drivers at a three way round about. No after you, No after you, No After you...........
Yes thats a potentially issue. Once drivers-less cars can network together it will be solved though
I imagine the drivers behind would be going berserk and pounding on their horns, despite the fact that the car is doing the right thing.
I reckon that people will be too busy watching TV/playing on their phone to notice what the car's doing. It'll be more like getting on a train when you go in a self driven car - eg you get in, the journey passes by, you get out.
clubber: I mean in the near-future situation where there is a mix of traffic and the cars behind the Google car were manually driven by meatsack drivers.
I agree that once they are all automated it'll be like the train.
Which makes you wonder why we don't just use trains...
Which makes you wonder why we don't just use trains...
I love the trains, but they cost too much money at short notice and they don't go where I need to go 🙁
Driverless cars ftw.
Trains don't go from home to wherever you want to go. So long as it remains affordable (or arguably even if it doesn't), people will always prefer personal transport - eg cars.
I love the trains, but they cost too much money at short notice and they don't go where I need to go
Yep - it's just a bit odd that rather than attempt to solve that we'd rather plough billions into driverless cars.
But that's market forces for ya.
I imagine the drivers behind would be going berserk and pounding on their horns, despite the fact that the car is doing the right thing.
Even the densest Evoque driver will soon realise that honking like a **** at a robot doesn't make any difference at all and will learn that it's not worth the bother. And anyone who causes an accident by trying to intimidate a machine covered in cameras and proximity sensors isn't going to come out of court happy.
Bring 'em on, the sooner the better.
Yeah, but the danger is that they see the automated car behaving like that (i.e. safely, courteously, legally) and see that as a major reason [i]not[/i] to get one.
[i]"What's it waiting for? It could have gone there - the light was only amber and that cyclist had well over an inch to spare.. "[/i]
I still reckon that the lure of legitimately being on their phone/TV etc will outweigh that...
I suspect that all the other advantages will outweigh the minor inconvenience of the cars taking a few seconds longer at junctions. Yeah there'll still be some dinosaurs who kid themselves that driving like a **** and staring at other people's bumpers is 'freedom' but I bet the majority will jump at the chance to get to work without the stress of second-guessing the antics of other ****wit drivers all the way. I know I will.
The lure of being able to not have to drive in city traffic, and do pretty much anything else will win over most people I reckon, you could sleep, you could read, you could work, study, play a game with your kids, catch up on TV.
Out on the open road I guess having the option to drive would be good, nothing on TV, finished book, on your own, not sleepy, might as well drive.
Plus, the internet of things could also mean that car sharing becomes much much easier, is a car going past your house on the way into town? Just use your Sub-Etha electronic thumb to flag a passing [s]spacecraft[/s] car down and pay the owner of the car for the privilege (or put up with his poetry).
I actually think driverless cars will speed up travelling, especially large cities. If all cars are able to communicate with each other then it would negate the need for traffic lights apart for pedestrians and cyclists.
Google... openly favours whoever gives them money
I do that, too. 😀
The obvious model here is no car ownership. You book a car to be in your current location in 10 mins and one turns up, you get in and go.
None of the hassles and costs of ownership.
People are already indicating in large numbers that they'd rather do anything else than drive their cars - hence so many eating breakfast/shaving/makeup/Facebook etc etc - the ability of self-driving cars to meet that need is clear.
They'll get the technology and legals sorted - that's all being worked through already [url= https://www.kpmg.com/US/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/self-driving-cars-are-we-ready.pdf ]KPMG report[/url]
+ the opportunity to make money is there - which is always a useful motive for technological development...
For many, many reasons this will be a great leap forward.
The only blocker I can think of is that the way people drive and the cars they buy has everything to do with status - but if you're just a passenger in a bog-standard car which is pretty much the same as everyone else's then you lose that 'status'. For some people (albeit a minority) this will something they're unwilling to lose
The obvious model here is no car ownership. You book a car to be in your current location in 10 mins and one turns up, you get in and go.
Yep - and the extension of that is that you don't want your local hire car to end up 400 miles away when someone goes on a trip.
So for longer trips it turns up and takes you directly to your seat on the mass transit system (aka train) which does the main journey before you are picked up again at the other end by another local hire car.
I'm already developing the 'Audi' mod for Googles Car firmware...
The obvious model here is no car ownership. You book a car to be in your current location in 10 mins and one turns up, you get in and go.
None of the hassles and costs of ownership.
I can see that working in countries where cars are not status symbols, but in the UK the whole point of buying a RR Evoke is so that it can sit on your drive and all your neighbours know you have one.
Presumably everyone will end up going driverless because the insurance cost of manual driving will become ruinously expensive by comparison. Great for cycling, because it will become one of the few remaining autonomous forms of transport (assuming there is not an explosion in the numbers of motorcyclists).
It's potentially the answer to how you implement a safe cycling infrastructure in this country, where we are always going to struggle to create proper Dutch style routes.
I'm actually getting pretty keen on the whole idea, although I would like to see how it copes with a typically cluttered UK urban environment.
[quote=GrahamS ]
I love the trains, but they cost too much money at short notice and they don't go where I need to go
Yep - it's just a bit odd that rather than attempt to solve that we'd rather plough billions into driverless cars.
Seems a good solution to "trains don't go where I need to go" to me.
True, but extrapolate out the idea of automated cars on the motorway:
You'll have all the traffic moving the same direction, at the same speed, using radar to keep the same distance from the car in front. Each car needs to propel itself.
That's a lot of wasted space and energy.
It'd be better if multiple cars were propelled by one engine. And if they could travel bumper to bumper.
Even better if people could get up and move about. Maybe go to a restaurant car.
And since they are all going the same way it would make sense to put them on some kind of rails...
😀
It'd be better if multiple cars were propelled by one engine. And if they could travel bumper to bumper.
Maybe, when you book your car <edit> i realised you said this already <edit>
Where, if you're lucky enough to have your own seat, there isn't enough leg room, and the person next to you keeps farting and there's a screaming brat 10ft away and, and, and...It'd be better if multiple cars were propelled by one engine. And if they could travel bumper to bumper.Even better if people could get up and move about. Maybe go to a restaurant car.
And since they are all going the same way it would make sense to put them on some kind of rails...
And most importantly of all, the train didn't leave when you wanted to so you had to hang around for ages on the platform. And it wasn't going direct to your destination so you had to change at Peterborough and wait another hour on the platform...
Woah, that turned into more of a rant than I expected... FWIW I rarely take the train and don't mind it when I do 🙂
The KPMG report makes some interesting observations about the sheer amount of land taken up by car parks, which could come back into use if people just hail a car when they need one - playgrounds, houses (that would sort out the supply shortage nicely)
Also, why do we pay so much for an object which sits unused for c22h every day... massive wastage of expense and resources - self-driving will be far more efficient on many levels.
I suspect this could be like mobile phones - once the technology is ready to go mass and people experience it for themselves, they'll be all over it like a rash. There'll be few doom-mongers and Luddites but they'll disappear over time. The financial, social, health, quality of life benefits are very, very compelling.
Owning and driving our own cars be one of those things we find hard to explain to our grandkids
[quote=GrahamS ]True, but extrapolate out the idea of automated cars on the motorway:
...
It'd be better if multiple cars were propelled by one engine. And if they could travel bumper to bumper.
...
And since they are all going the same way it would make sense to put them on some kind of rails...
What do you do when one car wants to leave the motorway? Though I'm not quite sure why automated cars can't travel bumper to bumper.
What do you do when one car wants to leave the motorway?
Everyone travelling at the same speed, in close convoy, means there is no need for so many lanes and road space. So you can use the left hand lane as a dedicated entry/exit lane - essentially a very very long slip road that give cars the chance to negotiate a space in the main convoy.
Though I'm not quite sure why automated cars can't travel bumper to bumper.
Well they could - but if they are sole occupied, as most cars are, then even bumper-to-bumper there is still a full car length between you and the driver in front. Not exactly a great use of space.
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-27196621 ]Why self-driving cars are necessary[/url]
A driver who "hogged" lane three said: "It's your fault, officer, you shouldn't have been so close behind me".
Another, stopped for speeding, said: "How am I supposed to know my speed?"
Can't wait. Even with the downsides (hacking etc) the benefits still outweigh humans being trusted with driving several tonnes of metal at 70+ mph. The idiotic apes that we are.