Artkansas 

Does Google have an ulterior motive in developing self-driving cars?

Advertising in self-driving cars

I-Like-To-Bike

An ulterior motive? Ya mean like trying to find new mean of making money? Outrageous!

Who wudda thunk it?

Mobile 155

I see advantages and disadvantages. Yes we could be bombarded with advertising and yes we would be full on the grid. That being said it would be one way to get rid of private ownership of cars.

It solves the any time any place needs of the consumer and represents a whole new concept about ride sharing. The need to find public transit would almost go away. Unless automated mass transit is also included.

With some apps on my phone I can track some of my friends 24/7 now and they can do the same for me. So I am not to worried about being tracked.

It sounds like the future to me and would be one way to get me to go car free by the definition made up by this forum.

Walter S

What definition is that? Is eliminating "private ownership" of cars a goal of yours? What is it about private ownership specifically that you find inappropriate?

wolfchild

I don't think majority of people are sold on self driving cars. What if the vehicle hits somebody ??. You can't charge a robot with careless driving... It will be very far in the future before self driving vehicles become an everyday reality and by then maybe we'll have flying cars.

Walter S

Now your death in an automobile will be due to bugs in the software instead of human error.

Walter S

I agree the dates are way too aggressive. Driver assisted, of course. But driverless like where you have no steering wheel? That will be a while. You have to cover 100% of the problem. This issue is following a typical profile for software development - solve the easy problems first. We've done that - and in the process have demonstrated a development pace that won't hold up in the future.

wahoonc

They don't do a very good job of charging people with careless driving either.

Bingo!


I honestly think self-driving vehicles would be a great thing, they can block them from certain areas at certain hours avoiding the car into the crowd issue. Another place where I think it would really be a boon is the long haul trucking industry. Just think, trucks could run 24/7 at lower speeds, and could be directed off the roads if bad weather or rerouted to avoid traffic. By slowing them down it would save wear and tear on the roads. Not to mention it would do away with the wrecks caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

Aaron

Walter S

A Test Drive of the Most Advanced Driverless Cars | MIT Technology Review

Quote:

But such projections tend to overlook just how challenging it will be to make a driverless car. If autonomous driving is to change transportation dramatically, it needs to be both widespread and flawless. Turning such a complex technology into a commercial product is unlikely to be simple. It could take decades for the technology to come down in cost, and it might take even longer for it to work safely enough that we trust fully automated vehicles to drive us around.

Mobile 155

No, it doesn't have to be flawless. Nothing about transportation today is flawless. Not air, train, bus, car or even bicycle. Water heaters aren't even flawless.

All they need to be is a significant improvement. I believe some countries even have driverless trains already. As far as finding fault isn't that one of the reasons the Danish model of bike transportation works so well. A type of no harm no foul system?

The time frame may be generous but it could be doable. After all look how fast cell phones have become mainstream.

And the agreed upon definition for this forum as to car free seems to be just not driving a car even if you have full access to one. I argued for car free to be defined as not having, owning, renting or using a car but that was argued down as too restrictive.

By the way Walter, I don't trust bus drivers to drive me around safely. My Sister just retired from driving a bus and she drives like garbage.

And what seems to be the number one cause of plain crashes? At least they seem to always report human error.

wolfchild

It would also kill a lot of driving jobs and put thousands of truck drivers and other delivery drivers out of work. I don't think truck drivers would be happy about that.

I-Like-To-Bike

By that definition, everybody is carfree, except when they happen to be driving a motor vehicle.

Artkansas 

Works for me.

Artkansas 

But the trucking companies will jump on what makes them money. Swift, Schneider, USA Trucking, J.B. Hunt, I bet they are waiting eagerly.

Mobile 155

ILTB. At least that is what it sounded like to me. It was the explanation I got when I questioned a car free person who was married but only rode in the car when their wife drove.

Sounded like a Limo owner to me.

Mobile 155

You have a point Wolfchild. But then look what Amazon has done to brick and mortar stores. Look what e-mail and text messages has done to the post office. People can even go to college online.

Walter S

So how does liability work for this car that is safe most of the time? Who's at fault? Presumably the manufacturer. Today they are rarely involved in settling individual accidents. The driver assumes responsibility for safely operating the car. But now, if you tell your car to drive you to work and there's a terrible accident, is that just automatically the fault of a human driver that was involved in the collision? You can bet on many many challenges to that - and they might be right.

The safety benefits are not transformative until most cars on the road are driverless. But the cost of covering law suits sure will be! Should the manufacter get off scott free because your car collided with a human-driven car? Of course not. Who's to say the car did an adequate job of accident avoidance? A lack of performance in this area can result in many deaths and car manufacters, in spite of heavy investment in driver-assist, may themselves be slow moving with deployment of driverless cars for reasons of overly exposing themselves in this area.

Once available, expect them to be deployed slowly. They will be super expensive, perhaps for many years. You can't predict the rate of advancement in sensor technology.

You're assuming that all parties involved will settle various legal issues without any of them successfully dragging out deployment for many years because it conflicts with their interests.

But don't worry. They've got a long way to go before being seen as just short of flawless. I'm a software developer that's designed various embedded systems since 1980 when microprocessors were just getting a start. I see overly hyped technology here when it comes to totally driverless. I side with quite a few others in this regard.

Mobile 155

Who is at falt when a jet crashes? Who is at falt when a bridge collapses? Shoot who will pay for poisoning a whole river?

Sure it could take longer than predicted. But remember they missed China out pacing the U.S. In car ownership by 10 to 20 years.

The point is also cars were not flawless and China had no problem converting in record time. Maybe half of the people I now know don't even have a home phone only cell phone.

It could take a long time but with enough wheels greased the time could be shortened.

Just as an example, when I took a cruise a few years ago it was on a brand new Cruise Ship shortly after its maiden voyage. When we were all on board and it was time to leave the dock I went up to the top deck expecting to see Tug boats pushing us out into the main channel and turning us to point out of the harbor. That was not how it was done.

There was a program loaded into the ships computer and GPS and the computer took us out into the harbor under ships powere and thrusters. The computer turned the ship 180 degrees on its own axis and headed us out to sea. This an a ship with 1200 to 1500 passengers and over 900 feet.

That was 10 years ago. Computers have improved a lot in that time. Much like my phone that I am posting on.

Dahon.Steve

Folks. These articles about Google's self driving car are nothing more than advertising the company's name. They are 100 years away but continue to get media coverage since they are not doing anything at the moment and it helps drive up the stock price.

bluegoatwoods

I'm no expert on technology or the law. But I'll make this prediction: if they can be made practical, then the law, and the civil courts, will find a way to allow them.

No doubt the transition will have difficulties. During that time when the new cars are on roads still inhabited by the old cars. My feeling is that the law will, probably incrementally, 'disadvantage' the old cars as a way of incentivizing their replacement.

It could get kind of ugly, with working class people being simply unable to afford a car. But that would have the effect of forcing people to live closer to work and to rely on public transportation. (Not to mention bicycles. An even better idea.)

And maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.

This subject hasn't been brought up explicitly, though it was alluded to near the top. But I vote solidly in favor of eliminating private car ownership. Though I'd settle for the notion that those who can afford exorbitant costs having their own if they must.

catgita

The speed of adoption is not hindered by technology, it is political. Realize how resource intensive today's car based transportation system is. Oil based fuel, pavement and materials, construction industries, auto makers, insurance, truck and taxi drivers, repair shops, dealers etc. Too many people stand to loose big.

This is why the conversation constantly turns to liability, hacking, privacy and away from the likely 90% reduction in crashes and deaths: over 31,000 lives per year that could have been saved in the U.S. alone except that we were so concerned about who should be liable for that hypothetical but extremely rare fender bender, or that lawyers might have access to a complete 3D record of everything that was happening at the time.

Get real folks. You are being played by people fighting the future.

B. Carfree

Now that Apple seems to be doing the car thing, I think we should ask ourselves if we saw the impact of iPhones coming when they were first announced. In just few years, almost everyone either has one or has some other manufacturer's smart phone. Based on that, I expect self-driving cars to be rapidly deployed and that the cost won't be a big hurdle. When people really want something, they find a way.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015...pple-cars.html

The social mechanism of adoption was proposed some months ago by Paul Krugman in his blog. He suggested that the truly affluent would go first and then be followed by the wannabes, just like with helicopters and limos in dense eastern cities and for the same reason: better time management. After the wannabes, the next tier down will demand their own and so on down the economic ladder as Tata and Samsung bring out their economy models. I suspect that less than a decade after the first ten thousand of them hit the road they will be ubiquitous and perhaps even a majority. I also suspect that less than a decade after that licensing requirements for drivers of human operated vehicles will be tightened up substantially based on the data that almost all road deaths and injuries are caused by human drivers.

Frankly, the more human drivers I deal with, the more I wish all manufacturers of autonomous cars the best of luck.

Mobile 155

Bluegoatwoods:
Another good point. Many moons ago we started adding car pool lanes on our freeways. At first you had to have 3 or more to use them. The fertilizer hit the fan on that one so they reduced it to two or more. Then came Hybrids. When Hubrid sales didn't take off and the Hybrid owners started complaining that the were stuck in traffic while 2 people in a SUV went flying by they changed the rules again.

Now a single driver in a Hybrid Lexus can use the car pool lane. And why some might ask, there are several small gas powered cars getting the same or better fuel mileage that the Lexus. Because they want the sales tax on the more expensive Hybrids.

It will always come down to things like that. The forum on the mileage tax proves that point.

Dave Cutter

A driverless truck... only stops to drop-off or pick-up loads, or for fuel, and maintenance. The computerized driver never tires, gets sleepy, takes sick days or vacations. The computerized self-driving truck has no health insurance, has no plans to retire... and no costly retirement plan. We are standing at the threshold or virtual workers... true robots of sorts. Life will forever change.

I am completely car free... at this minute. Earlier today I was only car lite.

I-Like-To-Bike

I think there was one poster who claimed he was carfree because the title for the family car was in his wife's name, absolving him of the guilt of being a car person.