Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike

You are assuming there is a public demand for autonomous vehicles and that the manufacturers of motor vehicles see that meeting that demand will be a profitable enterprise. Who do you think is anxious to buy these vehicles with their own money? The general public? Ha, Ha!

Do you think the current customers of Uber and Lyft car services are demanding to be chauffeured in vehicles that have no human behind the wheel? Where is the benefit for the customers? Is it the sales pitch of an alleged "safer" ride?

Do you think some Venture Capitalists are willing to put up even more money to subsidize the money losing ride-share taxi operation because now their money is going to suppliers of autonomous vehicles and AV technology manufacturers instead of human drivers?

In all the hoopla about the amount of money being thrown at Uber and Lyft, that manage to lose billions of dollars a year without buying any product from the automobile manufacturers, the hypsters forget that Uber and Lyft are on the road to bankruptcy now and replacing drivers' expense with vehicle purchase, operation and maintenance expenses will only get them there sooner.

Originally Posted by wphamilton

"as demand grows" does not make an assumption about demand. It means that when there are enough of those vehicles on the road, or projected to be sold, supplying hose transponders will become more viable. Here is the logic that you've evidently neglected: if there is no demand for autonomous vehicles, there is no particular risk from them and no reason to carry transponders. When there is greater demand, then supplying transponders is in the interest of auto manufacturers.

Your objection is a pointless diatribe. However, to answer your question literally, your own assumption should be auto manufacturers have a better grasp of the demand for autos than you do, having more experience, more qualifications, and stronger knowledge of the technology and market.



I don't care, and see no reason why I should care, whether Uber customers want driverless vehicles. What possible logic do you have, for demanding that? I thought you prided yourself on sound reasoning, from the basis of facts.

Originally Posted by Leisesturm

when Uber and Lyft start buying AV's at cost with the billions that they have stashed in the Caymans.

If you accept the loss of billions a year on the part of ride hailing companies as evidence of a failed business model and not as evidence of a criminal conspiracy, then you are likely also blind to the fact that they are not the only ones doing it. When will people wake up?

Originally Posted by tyrion

I'll feel much safer when we get human driven vehicles off the road.

Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike

I am not in the least concerned about the alleged "looming threat" of autonomous cars to bicyclistsas I believe the demand for significant numbers of them, outside of day dreaming speculators in glorified taxi service, is close to non-existent.

Originally Posted by wphamilton

If you prefer a more data-driven approach rather than your belief, this isn't a bad start https://www.vtpi.org/avip.pdf

Originally Posted by Leisesturm

One of the reasons that upwards of 40,000 people die every year in vehicle accidents is because people WAY underestimate how precarious their position is on the road. AV's can't take anything for granted. One of the reasons they are so safe is because they drive like an aged Grandmother taking ZERO chances that might result in a collision. Every lateral acceleration is a potential disaster and if humans understood this and reduced their lateral movements our roads would be tons safer. IF regulations mandate 3' passing distances for cyclists then the likely outcome is that AV's simply will not pass cyclists. The risk is too great. Better to slow to the cyclists speed and wait. Because humans are so used to just blasting over into the next lane and flying by cylists like they are standing still doesn't mean that AV's can or will do the same. And if cyclists cannot use shoulders or allow AV's to pass within 2' or less, then bicycles will be banned from all but the residential side streets.

Collision avoidance systems in aircraft are a mature science. Multi-million dollar aircraft with hundreds of souls onboard cannot rely on human reflexes to avoid mid-air collisions. Aircraft on a collision course can have closing speeds of well over 1,000mph. If both pilots were to panic and the pilot approaching from the East failed to move in the appropriate direction. Boom. So computers do the controlling of aircraft in close proximity to one another. The computers never panic, never forget the rules. Private aircraft don't have these systems and cannot be allowed to fly in airspaces where the big jets predominate. For AV's to really fulfill their potential they will have to communicate with one another the way aircraft do. In typical human fashion that wisdom is being resisted. AV's may not (yet) have the ability to communicate with one another but they can easily lock on to the large radio-reflective surface of another car. Bicycles with their small size and erratic movements are very much like small private aircraft in the glide path of a large metropolitan airport.

Originally Posted by bobwysiwyg

I'm not saying that after some maturing AV's won't flourish safely, but as of today, I believe you're way out over your ski tips. They are currently driven by the usual profit motive. Ask Boeing how that's working for them currently.

Originally Posted by Leisesturm

Do you know how many hundreds of semi-supervised AV's are tooling around on the public roads in all kinds of weather and at all times of day since that time?

Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike

Semi-supervised AV's? Vehicles equipped with fancy-dancy cruise control, useful on some limited access highways are NOT the looming autonomous vehicles under discussion any more than cars equipped with automatic transmissions.

Apples and oranges; again!

Originally Posted by Leisesturm

As of today ... what about it? As of today I haven't heard of a single fatality since the jaywalker was killed ... what ... 4, 5, months ago? Do you know how many driver, pedestrian and cyclist fatalities there have been in Portland, OR alone in that time?

Originally Posted by livedarklions

You're really going out on that rhetorical limb? You do realize that the miles driven just by the drivers of Portland dwarves the number of miles driven by (semi)autonomous vehicles throughout the entire planet during the last 4-5 months. Get back to me with comparative numbers of fatalities after you've filled a few cities with these. Oh, wait, we can't, they're all going to stall out when they need to change lanes.

Originally Posted by 350htrr

That is the exact same kind of thinking everyone had in the 1,900's when the horseless carriage came about... Most people would have said, it will never work, it will be a rich mans toy... it will be a fail because … well, where will you get gasoline...??? where will you get someone to fix anything on it when it brakes down..??? Where can you drive it, there were no highways...

Originally Posted by livedarklions

Uhhh, no. My point was it's rather silly to claim that AVs are safer because there are so few fatalities compared to cars with drivers when there are almost no AVs operating to speak of and zillions of cars with drivers.

Wanna try again?[/QUOTE]

Sure, How many people were killed/injured in an AV so far , caused by the AV ( and I am talking about a "true AV", not something like the Tesla, that the manufacturer stupidly calls an AV) doing the "wrong thing in a certain situation".... ??? Give me a % per mile situation... and... we can extrapolate from there the future expectations, of injuries and death in AV vehicles, which I am 100% sure will dramatically be reduced every year, by upgrades in the firmware/hardware... Un-Like the human drivers that have NOT improved over the last century, and keep on doing stupid things over and over, every generation... The only reason deaths/injuries have dropped is because of the safety "features" or, should |I say "smart features" that have started to be built into the cars of the last decade... Like... Like airbags that deploy at different intensities depending in impact severity, Like lane departure warnings, Like automatic braking, Like cruse control matching to other vehicles speed, Like a myriad other features some people on here don't seem have a clue,... that they already even exists and have already been implemented for the last decade... Implemented throughout the whole car industry, with every car/vehicle manufacturer's whole hearted participation …

Originally Posted by livedarklions

I'm not saying that we won't be seeing more autonomous vehicles eventually, just that the timetable is a lot longer than some of the people posting here seem to think. And they're definitely going to need to learn to cope with cyclists and pedestrians.

Originally Posted by Leisesturm

Could the last three posters please edit their posts so we can know who is being quoted? I don't know where things went off the track but it isn't that hard to fix if you spend a little time with the text editor. That said. Indeed it is possible to extrapolate from what data IS known of the safety of AV's given the mileage they have accumulated. Since they don't sleep or get tired they have been able to rack up far more miles than would be expected from any human fleet. Portland, OR as a subset of the country was not that outrageous a comparison. Anyone who imagines it will take decades to see AV's ascendant on public roads. Hmmm. Let's see ... the Wright Bros. flew in 1903 and Sopwith Camels and Fokker Triplanes were dogfighting in 1915. A Sopwith Camel and a F-16 have about as much in common as a Model T and a Lamborghini Countach but Model T's have had much more impact on the average American than any Italian Sportscar, any sportscar period. Early AV's won't be sophisticated but they will be. Did you think self-driving delivery vehicles would be making runs on public sidewalks in our lifetime? Did you think that drones that auto-track targets on the ground and WILL eventually make deliveries of food, medicine and parcels completely unsupervised ... ... yah ... DECADES. Erm... no, years. Just several years till the first prototypes hit the road. And we have ourselves to blame. No one listened when they said 'stop driving distracted'. We couldn't do that. So when they say 'stop driving ... or else'. Should be interesting.

Originally Posted by base2

AV's don't need to be sentient. My god how many problems would that cause? It'd be like that movie Dark Star all over again!

Originally Posted by base2

AV's don't need to be sentient. My god how many problems would that cause? It'd be like that movie Dark Star all over again!

Originally Posted by livedarklions

Maybe my point was too subtle--the predictions were sentient AI within 5 years. Neither the predictions of the timeline nor the actual emerging technology were correct.