I guess if computers can land planes they can drive cars. Still, I find it a little unnerving for computers to be driving cars on the highway, even if they do have a human in the driver’s seat in case they need to intervene. The safety record appears to be pretty good, though.
…seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.
I’ve seen the new Mercedes commercials where the computer has taken over for the human driver to help them avoid an accident. I guess that kind of hybrid-driving is going to be what we see first. Fully computerized drivers could pretty much eliminate the drunk driving problem, as well as the texting-while-driving problem. At least, it would solve those problems except in the rare cases where a human needs to intervene.
How do you feel about this new technology?
As I approach elder status and observe an increasing number of elderly drivers on the highway who suffer from diminished reflexes and failing sight, I think the idea is rather grand.
I do think you’d need one hell of a processor to navigate Manhattan’s streets and avenues, and perhaps some onboard weaponry to deal with aggressive cabbies.
The thing is, cars are already half automated, and it makes people terrible drivers. We have automatic parallel parking, fake manual transmissions, rear cameras and sensors. All-wheel drive and anti-lock breaks make people feel there’s no reason not to drive sixty in the snow, perhaps while they enjoy a DVD and send a text message or two. At this point, the main liability is the driver, not the car. So the more responsibilities we can take away from them, the better, as far as I’m concerned.
Seeing this misspelling too often these days.
I think I would have a pretty high confidence level on something like this. But with the recent scare regarding the unexpected acceleration problem experienced by Toyota, I have significant doubts that our technologically illiterate population would embrace it. Even though it was never proven to be software related, the narrative was that it most certainly had to be some mysterious and unknowable “glitch” in the electronics. And we all know about that there science and technology stuff, it’s just not to be trusted. In many instances, we would just as soon prefer trusting our fate to the illusory powers of prayer and incantation. That seems to be our nature in today’s United States.
The fact is, people have a near zero knowledge that thousands upon thousands of aircraft are landed every year, some in the most difficult of circumstances, by a complex system of transponders, complex receivers and software. Most times without any human intervention. Yet we somehow continue with the illusion that it is the gray haired, senior fellow with all the epaulets on his shoulder that greeted us as we can through the cockpit door who single-handedly put that jumbo jet on the runway center-line in the middle of that vicious thunderstorm. Not to minimize the tremendous abilities and skills of pilots, many of whom have taken over when this technology has been found inadequate or has failed, but this technology is silently ubiquitous in our daily lives.
But with the increasing attempts to discredit science and technology in this country, I really don’t think we are prepared to embrace something like this. If the circumstances that currently exist today were applied in the early 20th century, I have no doubt that an earlier version of FOX and it’s minions would be calling the automobile and the internal combustion engine a combined plot by Satan, some dude born in Kenya and the nasty Islami-communifascist cartel to kill the corporate buggy whip industry.
What happens when the computer goes wacky, i.e. Toyota?
How does the car respond to something unexpected, like a bicycle in the lane, or a person approaching the curb? In Portland, where I live and drive, cars have to stop at crosswalks, but there are a lot of bus stops right next to crosswalks. There’s a way of telling if someone stepping toward the curb is trying to cross or looking to see if the bus is coming. I have very little faith in a computer’s ability to tell the difference, and similarly in punks’ restraint in fucking with it.
I can imagine this would be useful for highway driving, but in the city it would be near useless.
I can’t imagine that a computer would be a worse driver than humans, from what I see every day. Whatever pleasure driving may have produced in some earlier day has long been demolished by gridlock, crumbling infrastructure, and incompetent/impaired drivers.
Automating cars is about the dumbest solution available to solve the problem — kind of a Potemkin village for saps who want to still pretend they’re some kind of knights of the open road. Why not just build great public transportation and send the car culture to the junkyard where it belongs? I sure wouldn’t miss it.
Offhand, my guess is that the biggest issue will be with those people who DON’T use computer-driven, and do stupid/unpredictable shit, and confuse the other computer-driving algorithms.
More importantly, I’m pretty sure these computer cars will be part of the COMPUTER SHARIA LAW TAKEOVER OF AMERICA!
lols
but what about the bicycle plot?
If Google is behind it, I can give it my full confidence. They do amazing things.
Seven test cars, one accident…seems like a bad idea to me, as the accident rate is more than 10% even in a limited population…
Was the accident the Google car’s fault, though? It says the car was rear-ended by another car, or at least that’s what the English says. If they meant to say the Google car rear-ended someone else, they worded the sentence wrong.
So if the Google car was rear-ended, it sounds like it was a human driver who did it.
Here is what is going to happen with this technology. The automated driving systems will, as a matter of course, have some form of log of what happens, a black box if you will. Likely a very extensive one (storage is cheap, and driving automation will need good sensors in any case) This log will be gone over with a fine comb after every accident involving a computer driven car.
This is where things get interesting, because odds are very good that 9 out of 10 accidents will turn out to be either the fault of another (human) motorist, or due entirely to the driver overriding the computer in an inappropriate way when things would have turned out just fine if they had kept their hands the heck off the wheel.
Shortly after those statistics are published, the manual overrides will get ripped out of the cars, and not very long after that, manual operation of a road conveyance will be out and out illegal.
Interestingly, this will probable lead to “high-speed” lanes. That is, lanes that are set aside for computer drivers. After all, if the computer is driving it can drive just as well as 130mph as at 30.